Commander Lowell

{{Short description|1959 poem by Robert Lowell}}

Commander Lowell is a poem by American poet Robert Lowell in his 1959 collection Life Studies.{{cite news|url=http://www.nysun.com/arts/reconsiderations-life-studies-by-robert-lowell/80182/|title=Reconsiderations: 'Life Studies' by Robert Lowell|last=Adam Kirsch|author-link=Adam Kirsch|date=June 18, 2008|work=The New York Sun|accessdate=20 January 2014}} It is a portrait of Lowell's father as a complex character. The poem mentions that the Commander gave away naval life to take up a better paid position with soap manufacturers Lever Brothers;.{{cite web|url=http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/lowell/commander.htm|title=On "Commander Lowell"|last=Stephen Yenser|author-link=Stephen Yenser|year=1975|work=Circle to Circle: The Poetry of Robert Lowell|publisher=University of California Press|accessdate=20 January 2014}} He was inept in civilian life, a poor golf player and a failure in business: "in three years he squandered sixty thousand dollars". The last lines of the poem - And once/nineteen, the youngest ensign in his class,/he was "the old man" of a gunboat on the Yangtze - were described by Stephen Yenser as banishing "the humor of condescension that is accorded a Quixote."